Review of Rosa Luxemburg: The Incendiary Spark by Michael Löwy (Haymarket Books, 2024)
Can we be motivated to change the world when there is no assurance that our efforts will prove successful? How is it possible to muster the energy, time, and commitment needed to reverse the ravages of capitalism-imperialism when its power has never seemed more pervasive and destructive?
As we ponder these questions in the face of one of the most regressive periods in modern political history, few thinkers speak more directly to them than Rosa Luxemburg, the Polish-Jewish revolutionary who is widely regarded as the most outstanding woman theoretician and political figure in the Marxist tradition.
A new collection of ten essays on Luxemburg by Michael Löwy brings to life her multifaceted contributions as political theorist, economist, and revolutionary activist. Few contemporary Marxists are better equipped for the task — Löwy has engaged with her work from a variety of angles for more than six decades.
The collection represents a distinctive contribution to the growing literature by and about Luxemburg, contending that she made “a unique and precious contribution to theory of history, political philosophy, and Marxist epistemology.” This is because she was the first post-Marx Marxist to explicitly deny that socialism is the inevitable outcome of historical necessity. Luxemburg expressed this viewpoint most famously in “The Crisis in Social Democracy” of 1915 (also known as the Junius Pamphlet), declaring that the…
Auteur: Peter Hudis
